Ghent Festival – The Oldest Free Music Festival in Europe

Have you ever seen an entire city – parks, alleyways, squares and every little corner – turned into a stage? Luckily, we were accidentally in just the right city, Ghent in Belgium, at the right time to witness what is known to be one of the biggest Europe’s city festivals.

When our Couchsurfing host wrote us back telling that Ghent was going to be crazy because the Gentse Feesten was going to be on, we didn’t actually understand what he meant. We’ve both been to music festivals before mainly in the UK, but they were limited to dedicated areas and usually out of town where music can be played as loud as possible without disturbing anyone.

The Ghent Festival is a whole different kind of event where the whole city changes to host any kind of performance you can possibly imagine.

Ten days of non-stop music, live performances, dancing, theater shows, street artists, acrobats, great food and loads of drinking involved too. Yes, you read it correctly, 10 continuous days of party atmosphere for any kind of age, kids included.

I didn’t actually realise how huge the festival was until we walked through Ghent’s streets and squares. Everybody is in a very good mood, smiling and enjoying the shows and it’s all for free, how incredibly amazing is that? No matter if you are into jazz, electronic, rock, indie, classical or world music, Ghent Festival has it all. It’s a real mecca for music lovers and for whoever also enjoys animation, art and a good spectacle.

A 170 Year Old Tradition

Ghent Festival isn’t recent, in fact it dates back to 1843 when it was originally held for the local farmers to help forget their everyday hard working life. The size and vigor of the festival has changed a lot during the years and it’s today literally for everybody to enjoy, and not only locals. Every year for ten days in July, Ghent is flooded with people coming from everywhere, attracted by the size and particularity of this open air festival that, ever since it’s initial first years, has always been free of charge which I personally find amazing, simply because it is so accessible to everyone who wants to enjoy live performances and wants to have a good time.

Apparently Ghent Festival is home for almost two million visitors every year and, despite the considerably large amount of people – and I’m not personally a huge fan of crowded places – we never really felt closed in by the crowd because the festival spreads everywhere in the city, meaning that people shift from one location to the other leaving plenty of space for everyone.

There are six different small sub festivals happening within the Ghent Festival to satisfy the different cultural backgrounds and ages of the various people attending it, and with both of us being big music lovers (especially live music) and having been kind of limited in watching live performances, we were super excited to find out who was going to play.

To our surprise we loved watching many completely unknown bands performing at Boomtown – the Pop and Rock part of the festival with different stages showcasing young talents from Belgium but also from all over Europe – but also two bands we already knew and we were super ecstatic to watch playing.

We were super excited to see EF, the Swedish post-rock band from Gothenbur, that put on an amazing concert that we both extremely loved, and also 65 Days Of Static, an instrumental electronic post/math rock band formed in Sheffield, England. Both bands were outstanding, we loved their live music performances maybe with a preference for EF that, even if they performed in the little tent instead of the main stage, were incredibly good.

We loved Ghent Festival and we would definitely return and recommend it to everyone. The best part of it was that from not even knowing about its existence, we ended up spending four fantastic days there full of music everywhere, it’s exactly what we needed! And that’s without even mentioning the incredibly delicious food we had too, we loved how easy it was for us to find vegan food in many of the pop-up restaurants and trucks around the festival especially considering we were on our 30 day vegan travel challenge. In fact we even succeeded in finding a vegan version of the Belgian waffle, how cool is that?

If you are thinking of visiting Ghent, make sure you experience at least few days of this amazing free festival (apart from few selected paid activities), it’s something unique in its own kind that I would probably define like a huge cultural event, a popular feast with old traditions and background that has been on for almost 170 years, as well as a urban festival and a mecca for music lovers. What is not to like about the Ghent Festival?

Do you enjoy going to festivals too?

26 Comments

I love going to festivals and attend a fair share of them in Taiwan where most of the are free. I see that this one is actually free as well. It looks like everywhere is so lively and engaging during the festival. Plus, I love how the Ghent Festival seems to have something for everyone, a little bit of everything.Constance – Foreign Sanctuary recently posted…Modern World, Modern Thoughts: A Story of Open-Mindedness and Acceptance

The Ghent Festival is in July from the 18th to the 27th, I believe it occurs the same dates every year but I’d double check to be sure.
I love that sign too and their burgers were so delicious too, my favourite was the hazelnuts one 🙂Franca recently posted…Five Pics and Tips For Glasgow

Sounds like an incredible experience to stumble into! Fantastic photography by the way; you really captured the moment! Ghent seems like one of those really cool cities that often gets overlooked because of more famous neighbours (Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges). Would love to get over there someday! Seems like timing a visit with this festival would be smart 🙂 Thanks for sharing, Dale and Franca.Ryan O’Rourke recently posted…4 Lifestyle Design and Travel Myths Busted

Guys, this sounds awesome!!! I love this kind of unknown festival, where you’re bound to hear a few bands that you love, that you would never ever ever have known about had you not been there at that moment. Cool! Liked your Facebook page now and looking forward to more posts!Rich – RichyFeet recently posted…Deepboarding in Bocas del Toro [VIDEO]

Thanks Mary! We felt like we were in the right place at the perfect time, the fact that the festival was on without us knowing in advance was such a lovely surprise that added so much to the whole experience and to the Ghent visit itself.

Wow, guys! What great timing on your parts! It sounds like exactly the kind of thing you WOULD travel for, so how cool is that that it just happened to be taking place while you were in town? I definitely have missed going to live music shows while we’ve been traveling, so this sounds like quite the treat. And I can’t believe it was all free… Just incredible!Steph (@ 20 Years Hence) recently posted…The Agony in the Ecstasy of Sri Lanka’s East Coast

I know Steph, we were so happy too to be in the right place at the right time. Music (especially live) is always been something that we enjoy a lot and an activity that we used to take part into before travelling and saving for this trip, having the chance to enjoy live music for free was simply a dream coming true 🙂

This festival looks amazing, your photos are fantastic too. i have never seen any advertisements about this festival. Where did you find out about it?Michael recently posted…Things to do between Brisbane and Cairns

We didn’t know about it either Michael, we were in Belgium and decided to stop in Ghent because we heard about its reputation of being the Belgian Vegetarian capital. Our Couchsurfing host then told us that the Ghent Festival was going to be on whilst we were in town, so it was a very lucky time to visit Ghent for us 🙂

Looks like a great festival, lots of variety going on. I liked the picture of the man drinking a beer in the crowd, it’s just one of those images that feels like a memory – you know, it reflects just what being at a festival is like.Charlie recently posted…Debunking 5 Myths about Teaching English in Taiwan

It was fun Charlie and I still cannot believe that is all for free. The festivals we used to go in the UK were way too expensive, definitely worth every penny, but very pricey indeed! I’m not a huge beer drinker myself but I know exactly what you mean, there is no festival without beers 🙂

Ghent is a nice city Tiana but it’s difficult to have a clear opinion considering it was incredibly crazy due to the festival. There was so much going on that if we ever return when is more quite it might simply feel too calm in comparison.